gehringer_2

One possible view would be that that Iraq and Syria are of more immediate strategic importance to Iran than Yemen and also that there are actors on the ground in a position to take advantage if Iranian forces are weakened. Also, the Houthi ability to make trouble ends whenever Iran stops supplying them, so we don't have to hit them directly to get that part of the result.

FWIW, David Axe in Forbes claiming that Ukrainian effectively controls the western Black Sea and grain exports have reached pre-war levels. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/01/a-pod-of-ukraines-explosive-drone-boats-just-chased-down-and-blew-up-a-russian-missile-corvette/?sh=36d311f95b0c

This is amazing stuff - Aaron Blake in WaPo reporting on SC polling.

I've sort of touched on this before, but from 1968 on the Woodstock side of the boomer generation seized the media/historical narrative for our generation and pretty much never let go. But I tend to believe the truth was we were never the majority of the cohort. The Young Rebubs for Reagan, all the guys who got drafted and served, all the girls who got married in lace and taffeta. There was a silent majority, but it wasn't Nixon's cohort, it was all the conservative boomers who were culturally invisible. Those people eventually came to resent people like Bill Clinton, and right wing boomers today are still a core element of Trump's support.

Right. Most likely Holmes and Campbell believe that as many seasons turn on depth as top line players (Campbell talks a lot about depth) They probably see some competitive advantage to using FAs to build depth at controlled cost while other teams are bidding up the cost of bigger upgrades. That said you hope they are flexible if circumstances warrant.

Good point. You've probably read some of the current analysis about how China might somehow end up in a economic conundrum where they miss the boat on per capita GDP growth and end up "developed" yet still only middle income. Maybe there is an odd parallel in wage stagnation producing bad leaders in the case of both Trump and Xi.

I don't care what either of these guys ran but credit due on some serious level research.

On Tariffs you can criticize Trump on two levels and give him credit on a third. The credit goes on the side of the ledger that we have been allowing ourselves to be played by China on trade issues for a long time on the theory that as they integrated into the world economy, their trade behavior would become less predatory. That assumption turned out to be utterly wrong*, and Trump can be duly credited for abandoning it and letting China know things had changed. He can be criticized (see above) for claiming his tariff work was going to help American manufacturing in the absence of any over all program in combination with tariffs that could actually do that. And he can be criticized for selling his approach as a way to force the Chinese to the table and then not having enough 'art of the deal' actually in his repertoire to bring China into negotiation instead of just starting a low level trade war. The last one is probably somewhat unfair because it takes two to tango and the Chinese have sort a programmed response of artificial excess outrage every time anyone does anything they don't like and that phase has to pass before they will enter negotiation about anything. But politics is hard ball and that kind of criticism that is fair game. It's the more benign policy cousin of entering a war without an end game. On Biden's side you can absolutely say that leaving the Trump tariffs in place is pure political expediency. But one real difference is that Biden is serious about re-industrialization in a way that Trump and the GOP never were and tariffs do fit into a larger framework in Biden's world. But the other question is what assumptions are we all making? If we give Trump credit for refooting the trade relationship with China, which I am happy to do, then we don't need to criticize Biden for leaving them in place. That is not an inconsistent position. *as we are seeing, China has become an economic super power, but as the current real estate crisis there shows, their economy is still very brittle and they know it, so politically it understandable they still have to try to have it both ways. That said, we are not obligated to let the Chinese solve their economic management problems at the expense of US workers. Maybe the real short form answer here is that with any policy initiative, you knew the Trump admin was corrupt and incompetent and would not be effective or productive in it.

Mostly just the numbers. When things aren't likely in the first place, their combined odds multiply against you pretty fast. If you have a 1 in 5 shot at a good FB program and one in 5 shot at a good BB program, your odds of having both be good are only 1 in 25.

It was a little more than that, but not much. He gave lip service to trying to support US manufacturing, but what he was doing still belied his inability (and unwillingness to do the homework) to get to effective policy. Investors were not going to put up long term dollars into US manufacturing based on capricious executive actions of a president who was as likely to reverse them the next day. If he had tried to implement a tariff structure with some kind of rational structure and as part of a wider industrial support policy and with long term legislative authority, then maybe you get an environment were investment dollars might have been encouraged to flow into industry rebuilds, but it wasn't going to happen based on the way Trump was proceeding - especially when was so transparent that if the Chinese were to play ball (at least according to Trump's idea of the rules) they could all be gone the next day.

Tom Friedman, who is in general pretty well wired, writes in the NYT today that Biden is working on a policy initiative that basically says "screw you" to both Netanyahu and Iran and would both put the US into a direct role of helping to form a Palestinian entity with or without Israel and up direct pressure (presumably military) on Iran as well. Interesting if anything along those lines actually comes to pass. Friedman often oversells but this is a case where I'm guessing he's probably taking the role of starting to float this trial balloon for the admin. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/opinion/biden-iran-israel.html

8 days off. This is terrible. They could at least have waited to take an 8 day break until pitchers and catchers reported to ST.

Left a little more door open for Keith at 3B than the in some of the local interviews.

good on them. But parenthetically, the wrong solution to the problem. I would say the real problem is with Oregon's quorum rule for the legislature. If they had simply gone to the normal system where who-ever shows up is the quorum, then the GOP would never have had any leverage by walking out. Now they have almost certainly created a rat's nest of future complexity and lawsuits over what an excused absence is and who is doing the deciding.

if you want to reach for best - it would be voters that paid attention and could reason their way out of a paper bag. But apparently that is too tall an order in the US today.

And the sound back has boosted the FB. Every breaking ball improves with the fastball.

The same one as the Ann Arbor school board apparently. I'll be voting against all the incumbents.

It's *almost* like they they don't want to risk him proving he should be here - otherwise the Chiarot injury would have been a perfectly reasonable occasion to give him a little run in Det.

You can't watch the games and not see that Seider is probably the most important player on the team. When the Wings get caught against a top line with Seider off the ice disaster usually follows in short order. I also think it's interesting the respect his has built up among the officials corp. He's achieved the status were he can (and will) unceremoniously dump a Conner McDavid and if it was clean he doesn't have to worry about a questionable call.

Where the US has lost it's way on international trade and tariffs is not on the issue of tariffs per se - they are just a means to some particular end in a given situation. The paradigm error has been the belief in the myth of 'comparative advantage,' which has led the US to be far too sanguine about ceding away economic capacity in far too many spheres. Comparative advantage is a myth for much of the world's GDP activity. Sure, Chile may have copper and Ukraine may have rich soil, but there are virtually no significant innate geographical or resource advantages in the vast majority of the production cases that generate wealth around today's world economy. The real drivers of what we often accepted as 'comparative advantage' has in many cases been one of two things: active industrial policies on the part of the nations we compete with and the offshoring of environmental and pollution hazards to countries more willing to subject their citizens to the risks. But for much of the modern tech economy, nations can become 'comparatively' efficient producers of most anything they *choose* to. And this can hold even in cases where one might think geographic or resources comparative advantage should come into play. For instance, even when the US was importing a high percentage of our oil supplies, we had one of the worlds more efficient (i.e. "advantaged") refining industries. To come full circle, tariffs have been the tool of choice for US competitors to create much of the 'comparative' advantage that mushy brained US economic leaders have rolled over for as inevitabilities.

At least from the Clinton "New Democrats" movement the Dems have been big time globalists and Biden is the 1st Democratic President to push back against that in any serious way so I wouldn't say it is accurate to say "Dems love tariffs" is applicable to much recent history. They may not have been as radically globalist as some in the GOP, but there was very little dissent from free-trade conventional wisdom from either party for 30 yrs or more.

If the rest doesn't work, can we at least move Veleno? A bag of FoxTrax pucks maybe?

I can't speak to Putin's mind, but consider that he's putting a fair effort into making Navalny suffer not in the least for exposing Putin's wealth. Maybe it's part of the whole doublethink process. Maybe to openly flaunt something while repressing any discussion about it as though it didn't exist is part of the overall operant conditioning to produce intellectual immobility and political passivity.

Yeah - his logs don't show any career games anywhere other than 1B, RF, LF. Was also curious why he would project Meadows as a platoon OF when so far he is showing no platoon split against LHP over the last year at all. Not a huge sample yet but enough that one would maybe wait and see instead of just assuming conventional wisdom that lefties can't hit lefties. He might not hit enough period, but L/R isn't an apparent issue.

Spare us Monty. Killian Hayes has already been paid $24M for being possibly the least productive regular player in the NBA. No one needs to cry for him if you outright cut him not only because of that but also because he'll likely go back to Europe and make nice bit more pocket change.